


to long-ago rooms, where memories lie

by sinkingsidewalks



Series: i want to be able to love you (without it hurting this much) [7]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Now with a happy ending!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 09:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15627792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks
Summary: The first time she realized she was in love with him she was twenty and he was upside down in her vision, sprawled out over two chairs behind where she was lying on a physio table while a professional worked life back into her legs.





	to long-ago rooms, where memories lie

**Author's Note:**

> *taps microphone* is anyone still there? Do you care still? No? I finally wrote that happy ending so many of you asked for. Or at least I think it's happy. Let me know what you think :) The title is from the Maya Angelou poem 'when you come' the rest of which doesn't totally fit this fic, but sue me I liked the words.  
> This is a work of complete fiction.

The first time she realized she was in love with him she was twenty and he was upside down in her vision, sprawled out over two chairs behind where she was lying on a physio table while a professional worked life back into her legs. They were eleven hours away from winning their first Olympic medal but at the time she was more focused on how she was going to get from the door of the medical center to her room without it looking like she was limping. 

He wasn’t saying anything, which was odd for him and not odd because Scott was everyone’s best friend until gold was in sight. Then, he had focus. He stopped being just the kid from one of a thousand backwater towns in Ontario and became nothing but the program. It was just him, and the ice, and her. And she considered her part in that perhaps the greatest privilege of her existence. 

The physiotherapist left to get ice packs and they were swept into the familiar isolation of just the two of them, and it was the clearest thing in the world all of a sudden.

Of course she was in love with him. 

He kept mashing the nozzle of a Skate Canada water bottle between his teeth. It was the same one he’d been working on for the past two weeks and she doubted that he could even drink through it anymore. 

He raised an eyebrow when he noticed her staring, _you good_? and she nodded and he twisted the bottle to get his molars around the thing to really destroy it and she resisted the urge to tell him he was going to choke himself. 

Then the physiotherapist returned. She tried not to flinch as ice wove through the bare skin of her calves. 

She hadn’t had that clarity since. 

Not the first time they kissed or the four hundredth. Not any of the times they’d won gold. Not when he’d gotten down on one knee and asked if they could make their forever official or when he’d held her screaming daughter and all but forced her into taking a break. Not when he’d told her he loved her or when he allowed her their goodbyes. 

She’d loved him through every one of those moments and every one in between, she’d loved him in some way since she was seven years old, but that love had always been fraught. By lust and pain and jealousy and fear and commitment. There was their careers to consider and their friendship and the fallout. She needed him like she needed lungs, legs; the axis of her universe would tilt without him. 

Tessa picks up a doll abandoned on the living room floor after Vera’s gone to bed and sits it up on an armchair. She has work to finish up, an endless stream of emails to attend to, but instead she settles onto the living room sofa, the one she bought when she was sixteen and never got around to replacing, to steep in her nostalgia. 

 

Tessa takes the day off entirely for Vera’s first day of kindergarten. It’s not a big change, she was in pre-school last year and had spent two weeks in camps over the summer, but it still feels like a seismic shift. Tessa can’t quite understand sometimes how her daughter is standing in front of her and not just a grey smudge on a sonogram and a kick against her ribs. 

“Mooom,” Vera complains, tugging away with her pastel pink backpack in hand. She rolls her crystalline blue eyes which are an exact mimic of her father’s, a move she definitely picked up from Scott’s girls, who are twelve now. 

Tessa doesn’t think about how Marcus has been in Asia for four weeks and won’t be back for another two. They’d made the decision together that Tessa would take her and that they wouldn’t make a big deal about it in case that upset her.

“I love you.” Tessa kisses one pudgy cheek and Vera almost _whines_ , like the dog she’s been begging for lately. She laughs, and prides herself on it only being a little watery. “You’re going to do brilliantly.” She kisses Vera’s other cheek. “Remember your ‘pleases’.”

“I know.” Vera’s looking over Tessa’s shoulder into the classroom though, wide eyed and excited. 

“Okay, have a good day then.”

Vera grins, the gap in her smile where she’d yanked a baby tooth out – before it was ready, much to Tessa’s horror – on full display. “Bye, Mom, love you!” She doesn’t even glance backwards. 

Tessa stands up and blinks away the burn in her eyes. The mom beside her who’s doing the same thing gives her a small smile.

“They grow up too fast, huh?”

“They really do.” She swipes at her under eyes. She told herself she wasn’t going to cry. Vera already has her chin stuck up at a ginger boy who might be three inches taller than her. 

“Your first?”

She doesn’t like to think of Vera as an only child but nods. “Yeah, yours?”

The woman shakes her head. “Meghan is my third, my baby though.” She points out a little blonde girl sitting by the books. “I’m Gwen.”

“Tessa, it’s nice to meet you.”

Tessa gets in her car and doesn’t want to drive home, only to stare at her daughter’s things morosely. It’s not like she sent her off to the countryside for the war, she’ll see her again in less than five hours. Instead, she goes to Scott’s rink.

“Hey!” Scott says, sliding to a messy stop by the boards when she enters. “How’s the school parent doing?”

“Pretty good. Worse off than V though, she practically ran in.” She leans over the boards and hugs his shoulders briefly. He’s comfortingly warm in the cool rink. 

“Hey, Etta cried when I picked them _up_ , you can’t get worse than that.” 

Tessa laughs and it’s exactly the reason she came here. 

He playfully taps the side of her thigh. “Get your boots on kiddo, come play with me.”

 

Whenever their days off parenting align, when the twins are with Julie and Marcus is in town to take Vera, they spend the evening together. They don’t do anything special, just work and have dinner and sometimes watch a movie. It’s time together, for no other reason than to be in the other’s presence. 

It feels just a little like being twenty three and in Canton again. Like there’s all these things around them, outside of them – the kids, the ex-spouses; the programs, the judging – that are overwhelming and chaotic, but sitting on her couch with Scott’s chest as a pillow everything is calm. It’s the eye of the storm. 

 

She has to be in Toronto all day and since Vera’s with Marcus for the night she decides to make a trip of it. She texts Scott to tell him she’ll be out of town then Jordan to stake a claim on her guest bedroom and she drives up to the city after dropping Vera at school.

Once her meetings are done, and the kids are put to bed, Tessa sits in Jordan’s living room with a bottle of merlot and the last few months to catch up on. 

Jordan, of course, notices when Scott texts her three quarters of the way through the bottle. _I miss you_ it reads, with an added frowning face. Amelia has forced emojis into being a habit for him. 

Not even trying to be subtle about reading over her shoulder, Jordan raises an eyebrow. 

“Whatever you’re thinking you’re wrong.” Tessa tells her, writing out a reply to Scott. If there’s a typo or two, she blames her five-year-old and her limited availability to build up an alcohol tolerance.

“I said nothing.” 

“We’re just friends.”

Jordan snorts. “How many times have I heard _that_ particular line?”

Tessa grimaces. “Yes, I know, at least a hundred. But this time it’s actually true.” In fact, this might be the longest they’ve ever gone without sleeping together, longer than even the near decade when they were both children. 

Jordan sighs, and starts. “Tessa, I love you-“

“Oh boy.”

“Hush. I do. And I love Scott. And I will, not for the first time, ask you one thing, _why_? Why is it not what I think it is? Why are you just friends?”

“That’s two questions.” Tessa says to avoid the nerves stirring in her stomach. 

Jordan gives her a look to say she won’t be distracted. 

“I don’t know, Jordan. I just-“ Tessa stops, distracts herself with a mouthful of wine and a sigh. “We’re in a good place.” 

“And both single again.” Jordan points a finger; Tessa rolls her eyes. “Don’t tell me you don’t love him anymore." 

“That doesn’t mean we can go back ten years like nothing happened. We’re different people now." 

“I don’t know, Tess, it’s awfully kismet for something not meant to be." 

Neither says anything more. 

 

Every Saturday he’s in town, Marcus takes Vera to the park or the children’s museum or the indoor playground if it’s raining, then out for pancakes at his favourite diner. She comes back, every week, sugar high and bouncing off the walls, but so, so happy that Tessa can’t find it in her to suggest an alternate arrangement. Even when Vera crashes halfway through dinner and ends up with sweet potato in her hair that she’s not awake enough through her bath to fully get out. 

But it leaves Tessa a day almost entirely to herself every week which she’s grateful for. It gives her time to catch up on housework or work-work or sit on her own in the quiet with a book and a cup of coffee without the pitter-patter of racing footsteps around the house. Usually, she ends up at the rink around mid-day.

Scott’s almost always there, usually with one or both of the twins. Their custody agreement, unlike her and Marcus’, is ever-changing. Today he has them both.

Tessa watches Etta – they’re not identical anymore, not since Etta cut Amelia bangs in Scott’s bathroom one weekend and Julie was _horrified_ when they returned – work through a section of choreography. She still does local competitions sometimes, even though Amelia gave it up a year ago in favour of volleyball practice. Which makes sense, that she wants to be on a team, she’s always been the more extroverted of the two. 

Etta eats up her every suggestion, mostly details in her dancing. She’s amazing technically – _just_ like Scott, sometimes Tessa feels like she’s looking through time watching her – but sometimes she doubts her musicality. She’s struggling with her arms going into a spin so they work through a couple of alternatives. 

Tessa demonstrates and Scott’s eyes are attached to hers when she comes out of the spin. Even across what feels like miles of ice. She almost loses her balance. 

“Dance with me, Tess.” He doesn’t give her time to respond before he’s taking her in his arms and hurtling them across the ice. They fall into the steps of an old pattern dance, one that he must be teaching because of how easily he guides her through it. She follows his lead, the most natural thing she’s ever done. 

They haven’t really danced like this, fully and on the ice, in years and she’s forgotten most of the steps to the pattern. He pushes her gently through every turn, whispering comments when she wavers on the footwork, telling her what’s next. 

When they reach the end of the pattern she’s gasping. Her heart rattles against her ribs like she just ran a marathon and she’s not entirely convinced it’s from the exertion. She’d forgotten what it felt like, to be the perfect matching half of another person’s whole. It’s something she’s only ever felt with him.

 

Right after they’d settled on divorce she’d tried to date. She’d put on her favourite dresses, left Vera with Kate for the night, and allowed herself to be set up with colleagues’ friends and friends’ colleagues, even someone’s cousin one time.

The men were all nice, handsome in that distinguished kind of way without being aged, and just her type. Some of them had even been fathers and single parents themselves. But every time, two days later, when the follow up text or call came through, she couldn’t bring herself to answer. 

Two months later, the paperwork filed, her rings handed back to him, she’d realized that she couldn’t do it. There wasn’t room in her life for anyone else.

 

She kisses him once, on the mouth, three weeks after Jordan plants the seed of it in her head again. They’ve woven themselves back together a dozen times before, what’s one more?

They’re in the kitchen of his apartment, a pot of pasta boiling on the stove, Vera with Marcus for the night and the twins in the dining room, working on their homework. He’d just called back that _yes, eight times eight is sixty-four_ and she presses her closed mouth over his, giving him all the room in the world to pull away. He doesn’t.

It doesn’t last more than twenty seconds but his lips are the same as they’ve always been. His is the same mouth that she kissed when she was eighteen and twenty-four and thirty-one and it still makes her heart pound like a girl with a crush. He catches one of her hands before she can pull away entirely.

There’s a flash in his eyes, the one that never fails to send her stomach spinning, and he grips her hand. She thinks _maybe_. Maybe the distance he’s kept between them has been for her, not for him. Maybe she doesn’t hurt him anymore. Maybe he’ll press her up against the counter until it digs into her spine like all those times in Montreal.

The microwave beeps. Etta comes racing into the kitchen. His eyes follow hers the rest of the night. 

When she kisses him goodbye, her lips on his cheek this time, the girls watching _Ghostbusters_ on the couch, she hopes he understands. _Just a little more time_ , she thinks he hears her, _just give me a little more time._

 

Vera’s hand pats against her cheek and drags Tessa awake. 

“Mommy,” she whispers. Her palm is slightly damp, and Tessa wonders, as she struggles her way to consciousness, if she’s getting sick. 

“Yes, baby?” It’s still completely dark out, but there’s a shaft of light coming in through the door to the hallway. Through the shadows Vera’s lower lip is trembling. Tessa blinks, trying to clear away the clouds of sleep and opens her arms for Vera to cuddle into. 

“I had a bad dream.” She whispers into Tessa’s throat, her voice wavering with tears. 

Tessa rubs her back. “Oh little pea, I’m sorry. Do you want to tell me about it?”

Vera nods, then picks her head up off Tessa’s chest and presses their foreheads together. 

“We were skating, and Uncle Scott was there, with Melly and Etta.” She still pronounces ‘Etta’ in two separate syllables, ‘Ett-a’, instead of the faster blend of the letters that is the usual pronunciation. Scott still finds it adorable.

“And I was doing my spin. But then the ice started melting, and it kept melting, going higher and higher until it was over my head like a pool. And I tried to swim, but I couldn’t because my skates were too heavy.” She hiccups, just lightly, trying not to cry. “But you and Scott and everyone else _could_ swim, so you went up, but I was stuck at the bottom, by _myself_.”

Tessa strokes her hair. “That sounds like a scary dream.”

Vera nods, her nose bumping into Tessa’s. 

“But it was just a dream. Would I ever leave you behind?”

Vera shakes her head. 

“And if Mommy couldn’t get to you, do you think Uncle Scott would? Would he let anything bad happen to you?”

She shakes her head again.

“You are so loved, my baby.” Tessa kisses her cheek and finds it dry of tears. “Mommy loves you and so does Daddy, and so does Uncle Scott.”

“Can I sleep with you?”

“Okay,” Tessa sighs. “Just for tonight.”

When she wakes at dawn, Vera’s a heavy lump passed out against her shoulder and her arm is so asleep she can’t lift it. She slides out of bed as quietly as she can, knowing that Vera has another couple hours of sleep in her after being up in the night; she tires herself out with the breadth of her own emotions. 

There’s a closet within her closet, an original from the house before she closed off a larger space under the eaves with a wall across the room. It’s hardly more than a cupboard, only a foot of space with two shallow shelves. She pulls the door to it open, crouched over, and the wood creaks in her hand. 

There are two shoe boxes on the top shelf, one that says Vera on a stark white sticker and one that’s stayed unlabelled. She takes out the latter and sits on the floor to open it. The colour has faded, more grey than black, and there’s a layer of dust on the top. Inside, there’s more grey and black, the nearly half a dozen sonograms; the only photos she has of their unborn son.

When they came back from Montreal she’d taken all of them, Scott had said he couldn’t and while she felt the same, one of them had to so she tucked the box behind the passenger seat of her car as she drove home. Then, because they were too painful and too precious to keep in the house, she put them in her deposit box at the bank, between paperwork and pieces of her grandmother’s jewelry.

Once Vera was born and she’d made her a box – sonograms, their matching bracelets from the hospital, and the little hat she came home in – it had felt wrong to have them separate. In the cupboard, they were safe and guaranteed that no one would stumble onto them.

She’d taken a picture of the box in place and sent it to Scott, knowing he’d recognize it. They never talked about it. But sometimes she’d come home and notice a disruption in her clothes – they had to be pushed aside on the rack to reach the cupboard – and she knew he’d been there. 

She flips through the pictures, feeling the edges of the waxy paper between her fingers, and refolds the tiny newborn onesie – baby blue with yellow and hunter green stripes – arranging everything neatly. 

It doesn’t make her cry anymore. 

 

A week before Christmas there’s a cold snap, then a dump of snow that makes a mess of the roads. On her way to pick up Vera from school her car skids directly through a stop sign and into a snow bank. It happens slowly, but the ice under her tires means she can’t do anything but watch it happen.

“I’m fine,” she tells Scott on the phone _again_ after explaining what happened. He usually doesn’t have coaching in the middle of the day because all his students are in school. “Totally, completely undamaged.” Her front bumper is another story. “I’m just waiting for CAA and I don’t want to leave Vera waiting at school.”

“No problem, I’ll go get her.” He’s on the list of approved pick-ups at the school along with her mom and Marcus’ dad who takes her out for ice cream the first Friday of every month. 

“I’ll bring her back to the rink?” Scott asks. “I’ve got Mia and Adam at two thirty.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how long this will be.” She’s not in a dangerous situation so it’ll be a wait for a tow truck, especially on a slippery day. “Thanks so much, Scott.”

“Of course.” 

When she gets to the rink after Vera is sitting by the boards with a red Tims cup between her hands and there’s a smudge of chocolate on her cheek that tells Tessa Scott was definitely talked into donuts. She’s watching one of Scott’s teams work through a program with utter enrapture. 

“Hey little pea.” Tessa touches the bobble on her toque to get her attention.

“Hi Mom.” Her eyes don’t stray from the dancing. 

Tessa waits for the pair to finish, and for Scott to give them notes. He sends them on a water break and Tessa goes over to where he’s standing by the boards. 

“Hey T.” He grins. “How’s your car?”

She grimaces. “It’ll live. But apparently they have to order a part, so it’s gonna take day.”

“That sucks.” His eyes are scanning over her face. “You sure you’re okay?”

She nods and reaches out to squeeze his arm. “Totally fine. It was really anticlimactic, honestly.”

He looks for a second longer then nods. “Okay.”

She touches the splintering wood of the boards and watches his students. Across the rink, Adam pulls a face and Mia caves over with laughter at something the rest of them miss. 

“What are you doing for Christmas?” Tessa asks.

“Going over to the house in the morning for presents, then I’m taking the girls to Alma’s for the afternoon, then Julie’s taking them to dinner with her family. You?”

“Marcus has her Christmas Eve, I get Day.” She bites her lip. “Come over? Christmas Eve. We can order food and get tipsy without the kids.”

“Canton style holiday, I like it Virtch.” His tone is casual but he knows what she’s offering; _be in my life_ , she says without spoken language. 

“I’m in.” He says. 

“Good.” She nods and goes to collect Vera’s things.

“She seemed really excited to see her dad yesterday.” Gwen says the next afternoon as they’re waiting in the hall for the class to be let out. She knows a couple of the other moms, but Gwen, from the first day, probably the best. Vera has had a couple play dates with Meghan. 

“Her dad?” Tessa asks, confused. Marcus has been in Vancouver all week. Then she remembers, Scott. “Oh, that’s, no.” She shakes her head. “Scott’s not her dad, just an old friend.”

“Oh, sorry.” Gwen says and Tessa shrugs. It happens often enough.

 

On Christmas Eve, Marcus picks Vera up early and Tessa goes back to bed. Scott wakes her a few hours later with coffee and chocolate croissants. 

“You’re my favourite.” She actually groans as she bites into the pastry, it almost melts, buttery, on her tongue. The chocolate is extra dark, almost bitter, so he must have gone out of his way to her favourite bakery in town. 

“Thirty years and running,” he grins. “I can’t give it up at this point can I?” He sits on the end of her bed, ripping pieces off his own pastry. 

“Ready for a day of utter leisure?” he asks once they’ve crumpled up the pastry bags. 

“I don’t know, have you actually finished your Christmas shopping?” she teases. He has the audacity to look affronted. 

“I’ll have you know I finished _three_ whole days ago.” He grins. “I left Vera’s under your tree.”

“There’s a bag for the twins you can’t forget.”

They still don’t get each other presents. It’s been so long it would be weird to start now. 

“Movie?” He holds out his hands to pull her off her bed. “Greatest Christmas hits?”

She rolls her eyes. “It’s too early for _Die Hard_.”

“But it’s the _best_ Christmas movie!”

Tessa laughs. “Why don’t we start with something less explosive?” He caves and she follows him into the living room.

Later, once the sun goes down, they lay on the couch with _The Grinch_ cartoon playing on the TV. She wonders how many times she’s been exactly here before, this day and this movie with Scott’s heart beating under her ear. 

“Tessa?” he says, her name twisting, nervous in his mouth. 

“Yeah?” she blinks a couple time to wake herself and tilts her neck until she can see his eyes. 

“I love you.”

“Yeah,” she says between breaths. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> That's probably the actual ending to this series. Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading. I've been thinking that I might put locks on this (RPF, you know the spiel) so just a warning to those who read without an account. If you want to find me on tumblr I'm @sinkingsidewalks

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [onwards, upwards](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18996112) by [sinkingsidewalks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkingsidewalks/pseuds/sinkingsidewalks)




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